Glow-worm
by Chyme for the Rhyme
Summary: If there are giant beetles on Nourasia, then why wouldn't there be giant spiders too? Also, Eva may or may not learn how to be a walking flashlight. [Done for Mokka Week. Theme: 'Magic']


The light rushes over the stones beneath her feet in waves, washing out all the crevices and cracks with small jabs and flickers of yellow. It is nothing like fire, yet Eva grimaces all the same as though she can feel a similar heat bake her skin; for the air is dull where she stands, old, encrusted with the same kind of musk that on Earth would make her think of spider webs and attic boxes, untouched by all the years they have been abandoned by.

Dol is an old city, not human in the least; the spiders here grow taller than the trees that scrape their branches against the tiled roof of the house her Dad brought for them after the Great Race of Oban. Luckily, they tend to lurk in the deeper streets, the ones shadowed by the encroaching fold of the jungle that tangles its vines against the open doorways of the more ancient of the temples, the ones even Aikka is unsure how to name, or even what old religion they should be ascribed to. They stand, gold light falling over the copper blend of stone and shadow, green leaves hatching over their roofs and the wide empty streets that thrive with new citizens; for every few decades, Aikka tells her, the Nourasians have to move their market places to new ground as other creatures creep in, their fangs developed for the shelled hide of the wild beetles the Nourasians have yet to tame that season.

Aikka has only ever dared to show her the scuttle of their legs from afar on the back of G'dar, using a grim finger to point out the way they disturb the familiar rustles of the makeshift forest and cause trunks as well as branches to shift and roust the green canopy above into a vigorous shake of movement, each leaf a maraca in the river-like current they shove out.

Eva finds herself sighing, banishing all thoughts of creepier-than-usual-crawlies away. And Aikka steps in behind her, as though to help overcrowd her mind once again with unnecessary thought.

'Don't rush,' he instructs her and Eva frowns, concentrates, even with his breath pasting the side of her throat with warmth. 'Think of it as being like a flame from a candle; too much force, from either wind or air, and it will blow out.'

Eva snorts, even as the yellow ball of light from between her fingers flares like a miniature sun. She watches in dismay as it then shrinks with a shiver back into a dangerously small blob, as though to prove him right.

'Yeah? 'Cos right now it looks more like a glow-worm to me.'

'We do not have these 'glow-worms' on Nourasia,' Aikka tells her. But his voice has become sharper and Eva can imagine the corresponding frown it has helped pull down over his face. She's tempted to turn, to see if she can offer a smirk or a wink to help gentle it. Except she doesn't have to. _Aikka_ is the one who moves, disturbing the moment, his hands sliding up through air so his fingers can loosely wrap around her wrists and pull them apart.

'Perhaps if we allow it more mental space,' he mutters and then lets out a sigh that sounds entirely too satisfied as the light flares out into a dizzying gold.

'I feel like I'm holding a floating crustal ball,' Eva says jokingly. But she's still focused, keeping the Nourasian chant steady in her mind's eyes, the familiar patterns of sounds Aikka had repeated to her minutes ago ringing out inside her head like a church bell. They're strange and soft, vowels breaking open in places her human ears don't expect.

'Saying a spell aloud is not enough,' Aikka has told her. 'It does not work the way your human media would have it so.'

And Eva has to swallow a giggle at the thought of Aikka reading Harry Potter or watching some sort of cartoon featuring with witches. Because actually _laughing_ is out of the question.

'You've opened up some space alright,' she notes instead, twisting her fingers as though she can imagine pulling a rope taunt between them. The light flickers as she does so, brightening as though she's shoved some sort of pressure on it. 'But it seems more physical than mental to me.'

'You are a beginner,' Aikka replies, his voice and face still pressed lightly against the side of her head. 'Visualising something may not simply be enough for you. The mind frequently connects physical distances with mental ones; it is easier to think about something when it is not in front of you, after all. Here, it is easier for the spell to flourish without your mind and hands pressing in on it, your living energy crowding out its own.'

His right hand lifts from her wrist and with a gentle flourish, a small ball of blue light delicately lifts itself from his palm, bobbing up to float at Eva's eye-level. But unlike Eva's pitiful light, it does not lose any of its shine, or become brighter the further it drifts away from his skin.

'Cool,' Eva tells him and means it.

Aikka's hand leaves the air, the ball of light remaining where it is. With a start, Eva realises that his other hand has left her wrist and is now traveling down to find its partner and the line of her waist. Within seconds, his arms wrap round her belly, trapping it with their warm, steady weight and yet, the simple sensation of their presence, makes her feel as though she could float off the ground instead for miles.

'Are you not cold?' he asks her. 'You do have a rather strange habit of bearing your stomach to the elements, Eva. Human clothing is so strange.'

His voice is very level as he says it. But the fact that there's no trace of even the mildest curiosity in his tone tells Eva he's playing with her.

'I've seen plenty of Nourasian girls showing off some skin,' she tells him. 'You don't fool me, Prince. What about your courtly manners? Shouldn't you be offering me a jacket or something, instead of your arms?'

He offers up a small soft laugh that tickles her hair, that makes her heart flutter. Her pulse runs thick and strong in her neck and she can feel it make something in her throat jump.

'I have a cloak. No jackets, I'm afraid. That is an entirely human invention. Besides; I thought you wished to learn Nourasian magic?'

'You're the one who turned this into a cuddling session, not me,' Eva informs him primly.

Aikka sighs and leans forward, just enough for Eva to feel his cheek against hers, to catch a flash of a blue eye peering into her own warily.

'You can always tell me to stop,' he tells her.

Eva laughs, bright and fierce and is gratified to feel rather than see the nervous swallow that pushes his cheek into hers.

'Not on your life, Prince. And not on mine, either.'

And Aikka swallows again, as though it is a spell she has uttered, and not merely a promise, one free of any magic.

But Eva doesn't mind. Because if she can make him feel anything close to the way he sometimes manages to rob her of her stomach, the whole solid weight of it fluttering like an insect, light and strange and _hopping_ at his touch; well then. She'll take the magic of _that_ , any day.

* * *

'C'mon.' She tells him later. 'I think I've got the hang of this floating flashlight down. Now it's time to actually put it to use.'

Aikka grumbles some noise behind her, sounding a little too much like Jordan for her comfort. But he wears sandals instead of boots and they barely let a stroke of sound escape as they pass over the loose gravel of twigs and fallen leaves.

'This is perhaps not the most sensible idea you have ever come up with,' he says dryly.

Eva appreciates that; if she were Jordan Aikka would probably have been a lot more rude about his remark.

'I know,' she says, trying her best not to sound too glib. 'But you promised me a proper tour, and that includes the more unsavoury parts of your kingdom as well.'

Aikka glances at her. 'This is reminding me of that film you showed me last week.'

'The one with Jackie Chan in it?'

'No. The animated one, featuring lions.'

'Oh.' Eva thinks for a moment. 'I'm definitely Simba.'

Aikka's lips twitch. 'Yes, well, Nala did appear to be the more sensible one. Not to mention the superior when it came to pinning each other down in combat.'

'Sshh!' Eva hisses at him, yanking at his elbow as she pulls him behind a nearby trunk, the roots spilling out of an abandoned well nearby. 'Look!'

But she doesn't bother to see if his eyes turn to the same place hers have been inevitably drawn to. In the dark space pressed out between plants and walls, lie glittering strands thicker than her arm, no, thicker than the pole of a streetlight back home. They glint, a faint purple hue to the shimmering sparkle that plays out from their lines, free of any light that might fall through the branches to dapple them. It's a magical luminescence, far superior to any glow-in-the-dark item produced on Earth, and Eva swallows, reminded of snow as they shake and brunch together under the crawling weight of a spider that hangs less than thirty metres in front of them.

And it's ugly, to be sure. There's no bright blue lining of a shell to gentle the effect of its appearance, the way the colour surely does with G'dar. No, it remains a murky, muddy brown, possesses six eyes instead of Earth's usual eight and, Eva notes, in same stray part of her mind that isn't paralysed with fear, that the legs curled up into a bunched-up fan around its abdomen, spread out into the larger number of...ten? No, twelve? It's hard to tell, even with the glowing aid of the web.

She wonders if it's really a spider at all. Except there are the fangs, curled like talons beneath the fuzz of it's mouth-parts as proof.

'Good.' Aikka's voice suddenly presses against her ear, low and heavy and urgent. 'You've seen one. Now let us go.'

Eva stares, still caught by the oily shine of it's black eyes, free of any pupils and nothing like the more mammalian slant of G'dar's blue ones.

There's a tweak at the edge of her vision. A stray movement, a dark twist, of a wing caught on a strand. A bird, thankfully sized no larger than a cow, tugs again, and Eva catches the light of small blue studded gemstones spread across each fold of its feathers.

The spider turns, its legs springing out into a complex fold of motion, easily twice the span of its body as it starts to race towards its frantic prey. But it's not the only one. Eva races forward too, out beyond the grab of Aikka's hands that arrive too late to stop her, her fists raised and bunched and with a cry erupting out of her throat. For a moment she's back in the cave with Canaletto, Aikka's knife still clenched in her hand before it crumbles to dust. Except...except this is only a spider, not a would-be god, and Eva has another weapon Aikka gifted her with, something better than before.

A lot of words that sound like 'shuuun' and 'caaar' play through her mind and fall out of her shaking voice; and suddenly her fist lets out an almighty glow, the light roaring through the trees to spark out a gold burst of reflection against the black shine of the spider's eyes. Eva trembles, her feet stop, and she sways, even as the spider rears back. No screech fills the air around her, no beastly howl joins the moment, but in the instant before it plunges forward again, Aikka is there beside the bird. He mutters something as his fingers smoothly pry a knife from his belt, the blade coming to rest against the quivering web strand before it glows blue, like the gleam of a small crescent moon coming to perch against the dark. It slices through the web like butter and the bird flees into the roots of a nearby tree, tunneling its way through the fronds at its side, to leave nothing but a few stray feathers behind.

Unlike Aikka, who leaves nothing to chance as he steps forward, presses his palm against the back of Eva's fist and yells out another word, one Eva's not heard before. Instantly, the light in front of them grows bigger, brighter, steadier, a blue glow springing up from inside it to rub out the yellow. It buys them seconds, seconds they use to turn and flee, crashing through plants and ripping up stems that catch on their feet, slowing them down by vital heartbeats.

Eva feels her breath escape her, even as G'dar's blue bounds into her vision and Aikka heaves her beneath the spread of his wings, coiling an arm round her side to hold her steady.

And then they are off. And it is nothing like any movie Eva's seen, no howl or crash of pursuit to follow them. And yet, she could swear, as she glances back, that some of the shadows are filled with a more oily shade of black than before, like the gleam of many eyes casually watching them flee.

* * *

'That,' Aikka pronounces as they land, 'was incredibly foolhardy, _Molly._ '

Uh-oh. He only uses that name nowadays when he's trying to make a point.

Eva straightens, ignores the warning in his eyes and throws off his arm. 'Sure, Prince. Never said it wasn't. But leaving that bird to die was...it would be horrible. And I'm not very good at standing by and watching horrible things happen.'

There's a silence. G'dar shuffles and nuzzles at a large blade of grass that springs out against the temple steps. Nearby, a few Nourasians watch them. For here, in this part of the city, they are safe. Maybe not from rumours, but then nobody's ever truly safe from _that_.

Aikka sighs. 'Far be it from to tell you to ignore your conscience,' she says slowly, 'but-'

'You stepped in to save me from Groor, remember?!' Eva interrupts hastily. 'You're no better than I am!'

'Groor was not a giant spider,' Aikka says heavily. 'I was confident of my victory that time.'

Eva raises an eyebrow. 'Weren't you confident of your victory this time, too? When you sprung out beside me and helped save that bird, _anyway_?'

She slides off G'dar's back, feeling Aikka land beside her with a slight thump. 'No,' he says. 'But it is a knight's duty to help, no matter the circumstance.'

Eva scoffs outright at this. And Aikka looks at her with a faint smile. 'You should not be so scornful. You act more like a knight at my Father's court than you know. I know I have said it before, but I will say it again: you speak like a true Nourasian.'

'I'm no Nourasian.' Eva reminds him. She spreads her fingers out against the sun to shade her eyes. 'If I was, I'd be producing blue globes of light, rather than yellow.'

Aikka's smile fades. But barely. 'It is still no less beautiful to me. I am sure there are many humans on your world you could not even manage to produce something as bright. Not even something that looks as dismal as a 'glow-worm.''

Eva laughs. 'You slay me, Aikka.'

Aikka's smile widens and he steps forward.

'I hope not. That would put an end to our magic lessons for a start.'

And any other wild, dangerous ideas I might have, Eva thinks. But she lets her hand fall from the sky to rest it against Aikka's cheek anyway, grinning as he swallows again at the touch of her palm. Yes, there's certainly something magical about the way she can make him react to her like this. And she won't run away from it.

She knows with a certainty in her bones, that her mother, Maya, would have surely done the same.

* * *

 **Notes:** Kinda shitty since I was working with a two-day time-limit (or maybe three?), but hey, what you gonna do?


End file.
